The One Thing You Need To Master In Real Estate Investing

Hey, it's Mark Podolski, the land geek with your favorite niche real estate website, www.thelandgeek.com. and today's guest is really interesting because of his martial arts background. But before we talk to our guest, I'd be remiss if I didn't properly introduce my co host, Six Sigma. You know him, you love him. He did over. How many deals did you do last year, Scott?

198, Mark.

I don't like to talk about it. 198 deals. I only did 192. Scott Todd from scotttodd.net landmodo.com and most importantly, if you're not automating your Craigslist postings, posting domination.com TheLandgeek Today's podcast is sponsored by postingdomination.com TheLandgeek in the second that I just talked about it, I just put up 128 ads on Craigslist. Scott, how are you?

I'm good. How are you?

I'm a little scared about our guest because if we don't do, we don't do this, well, he's going to kick our ass.

Yeah. You know, I like to think that I have a black belt.

In what?

Land investing?

I don't know.

Well, let's see if you're. I think you have a black belt. Definitely not a, you know. Yeah, I think you do. But let's talk to Sensei Gillian. If you don't know who Sensei Gillian is, he is the founder of Black Belt Investors. He's based in Southern California. He's the founder and president of Black Belt Investors, began his investing endeavors in 1995. Since that time, Sensei has created cash through wholesale real estate, obtained wealth through rental properties, and continues to teach his methods through seminars, personal training and club meetings, helping people to achieve their dreams. As a young karate student, he became heavily involved in martial arts competition during his high school and college years. Before long, Sensei received the honor of being ranked one of the top three martial artists in the United States for five years straight. His first year out of high school, Sensei opened the doors to his own martial arts school and to this day owns and operates several schools from which he continues to to teach actively. Sensei Gillian.

Hey guys, thanks for having me on. Mark. Scott, it's a pleasure to have you.

You're by far the most disciplined of our guests.

Well, that is kind of our tagline, discipline investing.

So let's rewind the tape. And how did you transition from martial arts into real estate? Investing?

Yeah, great question. You know, I always knew that I was going to be a martial arts instructor. And so with that, right out of high school, opened up my first gym, built them up to about 11. And then with that, you know, I knew that martial arts could provide a good living, but wasn't the living that I was looking for. I wanted a little bit more. And so I was actually looking at coin op car washes. You know, cash business, don't have to do a lot of maintenance. But I ran into one big problem. The part problem was I didn't know anything about real estate. I understood the business concept of coin op car washes, but I didn't know anything about leasing, build to suit land renting. I didn't know anything. And so I did a lot of research and I found out one thing when I did my research, real estate controls all businesses. And so with that, I decided to kind of skip right over the coin op car wash and get right into real estate.

I love it, I love it. So you get right into real estate. How did you get started? In what niche?

Well, you know, back then, 1994, I was watching infomercial like a lot of people do. And you know, the only thing that was really being promoted was buy, fix and flips because that's the sexy part of real estate investing. That's why we have reality shows we have today. And so I figured, you know what, I'm going to go down to this real estate seminar at LAX, checked it out, spent 1500 bucks to go to a three day training. And with that, then they upgraded me to like a $32,000 package of training camps. They didn't call them boot camps back then, they call them seminars or workshops. And you know, I was taking a variety of different trainings, you know, things about buy, fix and flips and wholesaling and mobile home parks and just really this buffet of different real estate niches. And. And I learned that I was getting pulled away from what I was actually after, had no focus. And the focus was I wanted to buy something, take a dirty dog house and turn into a pretty dollhouse. So I wanted to buy it, fix and flip it, because I understood the concept of buying and sell. You know, you buy low, sell high. And so nine months later, to my surprise, I actually flipped my first property.

Okay, so then what happened?

Well, it's kind of cool. 1995 was a big year because 95 was when I started really all my real estate education. I was dating my wife, she became my fiance, we moved in with each other. We got married, we had a baby, we bought my very first home, which was a pre foreclosure. I rehabbed it, created sweat equity in it. I did a cash out refi and bought my very first fix and flip property in Fort Myers, Florida, all in the year 1995.

All right, fantastic. So why Fort Myers, Florida, if you're from California?

Oh, well, price difference, you know, anything here in California. Back in that time, I had a slap of one in front of the purchase price, and I didn't have the cash to be able to purchase property here in Southern California because everything was running about $150,000 and above. But someone told me, hey, you know, we've got some investors in Fort Myers, Florida, buying, fixing and flipping properties. So I jumped on a plane, went out there, found a couple properties, made an offer on one, did the traditional transaction where I hooked up with a real estate agent, bought an approved probate, went down to bank of America, acquired a loan. They only required 10% down. At that time, my purchase price was 42,000. So I had to put $4,200 down plus a little bit of padding in my bank account. And then I bought myself a property. But then I ran into one huge problem. I didn't have the money for rehab. So with that, I read, I remember reading and listening these old eight tracks about real estate investing where if you have a good deal, money will flow to it. And so it sure did. I pulled it right out of my credit cards and paid the contractor. And every single month, I transferred balances from one card to the next card to the next card, making this vicious triangle of credit card balances. But, you know, in essence, I took a look at it and said, you know, credit cards just like a hard money lender, just a better interest rate. And at that time, they were allowing us to transfer credit card balances with no fees. Well, they caught on to people like me, and now they charge us all fees of transfer credit card balances.

I love it.

I love it.

Scott Todd, your thoughts? You're from your. You live in Fort Myers? Well, I did, I did.

I don't live there anymore. The, you know what I, what I think is, I mean, it's a great story, right? But like, you know, where I think that a lot of people struggle is like, you really put yourself out there, right? Like you, you really being, being in California, really to go across the country for a deal, like that's, that's really outside of someone's comfort zone, right? Like a lot of people won't do that.

Absolutely. And you know what? Especially back then, because we're more accustomed to going out of state, but back in 1995, to go out of state and take that type of risk and not having any type of support or a team and just putting your hands together, hoping and praying that everything gets done properly is a huge risk. And, you know, I'll say a lot of luck. And I tell everybody luck is for people that don't know what they're doing. And that was luck on my side because I was just getting my toes wet. And you got to think about it. Back then, we didn't have the Internet like we have today. We didn't have digital photos. And so I would get an update, you know, by telephone, hoping that they're telling the truth. And every once in a while, I'd receive in the mail a Polaroid or two of the updates of the property. So, yeah, I really did put myself out there, but thank God I did, otherwise I wouldn't be talking to you guys today. So.

So, like, how did you. Like how. I mean, okay, it's kind of hard to say. Like, before there was no Internet.

Before, there's no.

No. I mean, some people listen this show like they've never known a world without the Internet. But, like, how. How did you step outside of your comfort zone to, like, really get there to.

To do that? Well, I always put faith in front of fear, and I think that's was my biggest thing is putting faith in front of fear. Not only that, I'm an adrenaline junkie. I kind of like the. And, you know, being in martial arts and a lot of other extreme sports that I've done in the past, it was probably an easier transition than it was for my wife. My wife is. You know, I always look at my wife as a crock pot, right? She's. When you go to cook something, it's very slow. Turns out great, but it's very slow. And I'm more the microwave. I'm very fast. I want to go, go, go. And she's a crock. So I scared the hell out of her, to be honest with you. But, you know, there's enough knowledge there. I always tell everybody, if you're a white belt or yellow belt, you know, enough to be dangerous to yourself. And that's what I was. I was dangerous to myself. But again, the faith. Putting the faith in front of the fear allowed me to learn the process. And the risk factor on the money side was a lot less to do a transaction in Fort Myers they would have ever been over in California.

Yeah, I mean, I think that's interesting. The microwave and the crock pot. Scott, would you consider yourself the microwave or the crock pot on the microwave?

Man, I'm just like, let me, let me just jump into it.

I'll figure it out later.

Exactly.

Yeah, definitely. I'm definitely ready, fire, aim. And sometimes it really helps. And sometimes like, oh, gosh, I wish I slowed down for that. But, you know, it's interesting. But sensei, when it comes to real estate training, what is some of the worst advice you see or hear given in your area of expertise?

The worst advice that I see or hear given in my area expertise. I've come across quite a few educational companies that have kind of made promises under the table that if you join and pay for their services that you will do a deal within a year's time. And you can't guarantee something like that. That's probably definitely the worst because a lot of people will take their life savings and invest it into this educational company. And the next thing you know, either the person that invested knows nothing about business. They've probably been a W2 employee their whole year, they don't know anything about real estate and they're banking on a salesperson to get them a deal in the first year. And that salesperson not going to get them a deal. They'll give them the tools and the instructions but never give them a deal. And I've come across that quite a bit. And too many people have lost their life savings. So I suggest to anybody that's going to invest their hard earned dollar to get the knowledge that they need to turn into wisdom to actually do deals, then they really should research that educator to find out if they're truly the one for them. You know, I'm not going to go to an educator to learn about apartments. If someone, if I'm trying to do wholesaling for an example, and I definitely would rather have someone in my own backyard if need be, if I had a knock on their door. So I would say just like shopping for your own home or shopping for a car, you don't go to the first dealership, you don't go to the first house and buy it. You need to shop around for your trainer as well.

I love it. I love it. So, sensei, today, as far as where your time is spent, where is your time spent? Mainly as far as the investing realm and the training realm.

The majority of it is by far the investing side. I opened up a service Back in the year 2000 called remote rehabs. And I took everything that I knew from starting my first property in Fort Myers, Florida to that point and helping investors in California at that time to invest out of state. To my knowledge, I'm the second oldest company in California pipelining out of state properties into California. And so I spend most of my time on acquisition is where I spend most of my time. The education, that's kind of a breeze for me. I think I'm a natural born educator. I've been teaching martial arts since I was the age of 12. I love getting out in front of crowds and help people and building those success stories. And so it doesn't require a lot of effort from my side, but definitely Black Belt investors. 80, 85% of our business is on the investment side of things.

Nice, nice. What do you think of when you hear the word successful?

Successful is defined by however you want to define it. You know, if someone says, hey, you know, success to me is quitting my full time job to go part time, that's success. You know, success to me. I'll just tell you, Mark, this past week and I took my family last Friday and we went down into Mexico and we built two homes for families that have never had a house. They've been living underneath blue tarps is what they've been doing. And if it wasn't for real estate, I would not had the opportunity to donate my money and my time and give my family the experience to build two homes for families in need. That's my definition of success.

That's amazing. That's amazing. I love that. And you know, Scott, Todd smiling like now, now Scott and I are like just in a big ball of shame. Like we haven't done that.

Well, that was my intent.

Yeah, exactly. Now, now we're gonna have to like, okay, we're gonna build three houses in Guatemala.

Go ahead. One up Me. That's. Okay.

Well, Mark, I don't know that you and I are like, I don't think that we are handy enough to build a house, man. Like they, they might be better off if they don't have our house.

That's true. We could help them, you know, fix their computer.

Yeah.

Help with like some software maybe.

I'm.

I could probably like, you know, fill a hole with some dirt for them. But if I have to like build a house, man, they don't want that one.

Scott, if you know me, you'll know that I don't have a callus on my hand. I am not out there swinging Hammers. But that last week and I don't have calluses, I have blisters because I decided to dig in a bit and it reminded me why I'm in the business I'm in and know how to delegate properly. Yeah.

You know, one of the things that you said that really, that I really kind of connected with me was the fact that, you know, you can work your entire Life with a W2 job and you can switch over and do real estate investing and be successful.

Right.

But I think that one of the things that people like under calculated, if you will, is really the strategy or the struggle that it takes to build your business know how, because managing a, managing an investment business, even though, even, even if you're just doing real estate investing, it does require you to dig in like you were saying about the houses. It requires you to dig in and really pull like everything that you have out because you have to touch on things that you've never had to touch on before your entire life, like marketing or, you know, business decision making, business skill sets, finance, you know, and it's not necessarily that you can't overcome these things, but if you're, when you're learning how to do something new, there's a lot being thrown at you and you really have to like, you really have to like, figure out how you're going to absorb all of this new material and process it and then condition yourself to make the right priorities. Because, you know, like, I see it all the time. I'm sure you do too. Like people, people want to gravitate towards the easy stuff like, and the fun stuff like, hey, let me come up with a logo for my company as opposed to, you know, getting out there and doing the harder parts of any business like offers, making offers, or, you know, researching a market. I mean, do you see the same thing and what advice do you have to people?

Yeah, absolutely. It's extremely overwhelming because as you just mentioned, there's a lot of aspects of, in creating a business. And number one, I think what's important for anybody stepping into the entrepreneur world is learning your budget, the budgeting of time and the budgeting of money. And those two things will dictate of how far you can go. And so, you know, then we have to prioritize on, on the different aspects needed to be able to progress in our new business. And so, yeah, I think a lot of people, first thing to do is they come up with some bozo company name that doesn't make a whole lot of sense because there's no Branding behind it. Then they run out and get a business card and they get a logo and they're. That's the easy way. And that's kind of the fun thing to do too, you know, but, but it's funny because I'll work with a lot of rehabbers and wholesalers and I do a lot of purchase option transactions and that's exactly what they'll do. They'll run out and get a business card. They don't think about their name. They'll go get a website, they'll go get a logo and they're not really thinking about the long haul here. However, a year's gone by and they're saying there's no deals out there or I haven't done a deal yet. And the next thing I find out is they've never made any offers. You know, it's because they're not going into the field and cultivating that land. They're doing all the surface stuff. And a lot of things that they're doing is also behind the computer. And if it's behind the computer, the masses know about it. And then you find yourself in this pot of, you know, dog eat dog and it's, and it's not allowing them to progress. So I think it's very important that anybody that's going to start a business step back, take a look. What can I afford in my time? How much can I dedicate per week? How much can I dedicate on a monthly basis a dollar wise, so I can stay within my budget and then who can I get for consulting so I know how to grow my business properly. Because we don't want to build the 13th story of a skyscraper without building the foundation first. Yeah.

And I see a lot of parallels with martial arts and real estate investing.

Absolutely.

It makes you think of the Karate Kid where, you know, the guy's starting out and he's like, wash the car, you know, wax on, wax off. And he doesn't see, you know, why he's doing it and it's not fun. He wants a punch, he wants a kick.

Right.

And it's, he's starting with all the, all the drudgery of training. And it's the same thing in, you know, in business and, and having to embrace sort of these sucky hard components of the work. So sensei, what are the things that you see as the biggest parallels between martial arts and real estate investing?

Discipline. Discipline is going to be the biggest parallel if you don't have discipline to dedicate time, discipline to budget yourself, discipline to do the work that other people won't do to be able to succeed. It's just not gonna happen for you. You know, I think the analogy you just gave right now in regards to the Karate Kid of he's out there, you know, doing gardening and housework and painting and waxing and all those other things. He doesn't really know why he's doing it, but he's building up. Muscle memory is what he's doing. Right. It's repetitive action, you know, And I can guarantee from when he first started painting to the end of the fence, when he finished painting, he had a better technique and he was able to probably streamline a little bit quicker than as he began. And a lot of people want that easy path. They want that easy path. And that's because, be honest with you, I think we're just getting lazy. And two, they watch a reality show where they acquire a property, they put in an offer, they buy the house, they fix it up, they close money, all within 60 minutes. And then so everybody else wants to do exactly the same, but is being.

Sensei. We're losing you here, the Internet. But I think we got the gist of what you're saying. Are you back?

Yeah. Can you hear me?

Yeah, yeah, now we can hear. So as far as the discipline, how can we cultivate being more disciplined in our real estate investing businesses and in our lives? What's your advice to do that?

I think it all starts off with the morning time. I think everybody should have somewhat of a morning ritual, meaning that they should have some clarity in their mind. They should do some sort of goal setting for that day, whether some people write it down on paper, some people punch it into their iPhone. Personally, myself, what I do every single morning, and it's a ritual for me is that I'll wake up and I'll be honest. I probably lay in bed for 45 minutes to an hour before I get out of bed. But I'm in bed and I'm stretching and I'm breathing, and then I read a verse of the day from the Bible. And then I plan out my day and I focus on here's what I'm going to get done. And I always put the most difficult tasks first and the easiest task last, because I know I'm going to be sharpest in the morning and early afternoon than I would be in the later afternoon. And I don't like to procrastinate. Even though we all procrastinate, I don't like to do it. So I think you Know, having the. The maybe I don't know what you call it, a self hypnosis, goal setting time for yourself in the morning to be able to set the course of the day, and always having some positive information coming in through your ears to set that tone of the day. Yeah.

And a great book to help you, sort of guide you with that is the Miracle Morning. Hal Elrab.

Miracle Morning.

Yeah. Have you read that since.

I have not.

Oh, you'll love it.

I'm sure they have it on audio too, right?

Yeah, yeah. You live it. You live it. Scott Todd, how do you cultivate your discipline?

Mark?

What I do is I kind of batch my activities. You know, this day is set for this, this day is set for that. And it kind of just becomes almost like muscle memory. Like, you know, you wake up and you're like, okay, today's money.

Money Monday.

I mean, you batch your days, you theme your days. You know, you. You. And I record podcasts on Tuesdays, so anything that I really need to be at the computer for Tuesdays is my day to do that. You know, Money Monday could construct anything. I'm looking over financials for my business, doing, doing whatever, you know, and then it just continues on. And then I like to. I really do like to take Mondays and Fridays and really go really easy on those days, you know, Like, I don't want to over overtax my brain.

Yeah, I know. I do the same thing. And I think it's. I know I do the time theming as well. And what's interesting is that, like, my wife and I have this ongoing sort of debate where sensei, I'll say, like, I'm disciplined, and she'll say, I have OCD because I have to kind of do these things every morning, otherwise my day kind of goes haywire. And she's like, well, why can't you just notice? Meditate right now. I'm like, but I really. That's my discipline. She's like, no, that's ocd. So how am I going to win this debate? Sensei, help me.

You have disciplined ocd.

Okay, I disciplined ocd. But, you know, there are a few things that you said that I think are so wise. You know, starting early in the morning, taking care of yourself first, and batching your hardest activities, your most mentally taxing activities in the morning or when you're freshest. Because, you know, there's.

There's two of us.

There's present us and there's future us. Right. Future us has all this energy and all this Time and, you know, and all this resolve and then you get to that future you and you're like, I'm tired. Right. And not having that awareness is rough. So we're at that point now at the podcast where we're going to put you on the spot and I think your mentorship. This, this podcast has been wonderful, but we're gonna ask you for one more tip of the week. A website, a resource, a book, something actionable where the art of passive income listeners can go right now, improve their businesses, improve their lives. What have you got?

Yeah, you know, I want to give it. I had a tip planned for today's podcast, but I'm going to change it up because I just went through a consultation with a student of mine that is flipping a house. And you know, he pulled up the primary data information, which is from the MLS to find out what the after repair values are on a property. And so he had some pretty good, you know, arvs here. And I'm taking a look at them and then I turn around and ask him, I said, where are your title comps? He goes, well, why do I need title comps? Because title comps would not be, not necessarily be reflected on the mls. The mls. Comparable sales are all from sales gone through a realty agency. But then you have private sales and those would not be on the mls. So if you take the MLS and you take the title comps, which will have a mixture of MLS sales and I'll have private private sales, then you may get a higher number. And you know what? We had a number, an ARV number that was $35,000 more than what we found on the MLS and now he can target a higher number. And so he could have been left leaving a lot of money on the table. So my tip is when you run comps, you run them off the MLS and you get title comps as well, because you might be missing something.

Great tip. I love it. Scott. Todd, what's your tip of the week?

Mark?

I cannot stand these websites that you go to and you know, like you're sitting there trying to read something and maybe you're trying to be quiet and all of a sudden they get the autopl going. You know, it's like, you know, and you're trying to turn it down. You're trying to be, you know, like, yeah, I'm watching, I'm watching tv. And you're really like, you know, surfing on the Internet and, you know, the websites rat you out, right? I can't stand it. So I went on A hunt. And I found a Google Chrome plugin called disable html5 autoplay. And you know, it's, I can just imagine like in my corporate days, like maybe I was in a conference, a conference or something or meeting, and I'm like doing, you know, some, some little web surfing and then all of a sudden this video pops up and you're like not paying attention. You know, do yourself a favor, just download this little app. It just makes it so that the videos just don't start playing at the inappropriate time and, you know, brings a little bit of joy to my life.

I love that.

I love it. I'm getting that for sure.

You must really hate it to do that type of research. But I like it.

I could like, I literally, like, it was just these, these videos were just popping up at the wrong time and I'm like, I can't stand this. There's got to be a solution.

There is.

Scott, are you outsourcing your, your tips of the week? Are you having fancy hands? You research, find me a tip of the week.

I don't want to put my name on unless I actually like, you know, actually do it, you know, like, so I spend time, Mark, I spend time doing them.

All right, awesome, awesome. Well, my tip of the week is learn more about Sensei Gillian and the art of discipline and real estate investing at black belt investors.com blackbeltinvestors.com Sensei, are we good?

We're good. I wish we had more time, but I'm glad you guys had me on board.

Scott, are we good?

Mark are great.

Alright, well I want to thank all the listeners and just remind them the only way, the only way we're gonna get the quality of guests like Essencei gillian from black beltinvestors.com is if you do us two little favors. Actually, three little favors, I should say. You got to subscribe, you got a rate and you've got to review the podcast. Send us a screenshot of your review to supportlandgeek.com we are going to send you for free the Passive Income launch kit. That's a $97 value. Nothing to sneeze at, right? Scott?

Todd, Nothing to sneeze at all.

And also start automating your Craigslist postings. Don't waste time. You can always make more money. You can't get more time. Go to postingdomination.com thelandgeek Scott, should we.

Mark, let's.

I'll just let you do it.

I'll just do it.

How about that?

Let's. Freedom ring.

Sensei's like, man, you guys would not. Wouldn't last a day in my dojo with you.

You guys got to yell that out, like, you know, from Braveheart, that type of yell that out. Let freedom ring. There you go.

All right, we'll work on it. All right. Thanks, everybody.

All right. Thank you.